Passage 19
If Cairo were in a traffic-free calm,
I would exchange it for your poetic calm.
Spurting fountains splash our would-be children
who squeal and call baba as you stay calm.
Yellow flowers on spiky stems keep love
from turning into a flowering calm.
I understand too well your slighting words
lulling me into before-the-storm calm.
My fortune, read in a Turkish coffee,
sees no garden of love, but desert’s calm.
No social niceties lubricating the grit
of our lives,– only my tears’ glistening calm.
Bustan-like orchard spaces I flee to,
offering coolness from your ardent calm.
Had you felt me forlorn and uprooted,
you could have planted an eternal calm.
This 12th -century Ayyubid wall
Protects us both with its solid calm.
The lovers slip in as Layla thinks If.
They, not we, search for a lovemaking calm.